The Atmosphere of Climate Change.
13 experimental ethnographic short films, 1,700 images, and a corresponding research paper.
2020.
An artistic research project overlapping with visual anthropology using AI, media images, imagination, and film to explore the atmosphere constructed around the topic of climate change. The project involved interviews with participants asking them to visualize climate change as a tangible object with a color, form, and texture and to describe their interactions with the object. They were also asked to recount their personal experiences of climate change as well as their encounters with climate change media images.
The outcome is a series of 13 experimental ethnographic short films coupling archival footage with interview audio. The films are divided into segments - Experience and Imagination.
To complement the project a neural network was trained on an input set of media images of climate change in order to generate new climate change images.
1,700 new climate change images were generated. The resulting images, as shown below, demonstrate atmospheric aesthetic similarities in media constructions of climate change. The research paper, The Atmosphere of Climate Change: An Anthropological Study Using Visualization, Imagination, Film, and Artificial Intelligence as Conceptual Tools to Explore the Construction of Atmosphere, is the first research exploration I am aware of creating AI generated images for the purpose of cultural and media studies on the topic of climate change.
One short film from the series can be viewed here.
Other films in the series or information about the use of AI are available upon request.
collection of film stills
still and link to short film 1 - The Heat
still from the film
sample of neural network generated images
sample of neural network generated images
sample of neural network generated images
Contact
Nicole Miller
Växjö, Sweden
[email protected]